The Campaign for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) is a global network of parliamentarians and NGOs that defend and struggle for citize...

The Campaign for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) is a global network of parliamentarians and NGOs that defend and struggle for citizens representation at the United Nations. It is based on the idea that the great challenges facing humanity, such as global social inequality, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and environmental degradation, can only be overcome by a joint effort of all human beings.

To achieve this, the Campaign proposes the creation of a consultative Parliamentary Assembly within the UN system, which does not need the reform of the UN Charter as a requirement. This would create an important link between the UN and its agencies, governments and national parliaments and civil society. Thus, the Parliamentary Assembly would operate as the voice of citizens, giving them a democratic space of representation.

The Secretariat of the campaign, led by the Committee for a Democratic UN, formally began its work in 2007. It started working steadily to achieve its objectives, which are related to the creation of networks of local individuals and national organizations, governments and parliamentarians demanding a UNPA in their sphere of influence, the establishment of a coalition between them and the civil society, facilitating contacts and discussions with governments and parliaments. Thus, the Secretariat of the Campaign helps define objectives, develop policies and strategies to realize these goals.

Within this framework, on Thursday 6th of August, 2009, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies approved unanimously a draft statement that supports the creation of the UNPA (Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations system). Such a support came from legislators across the whole political spectrum: the Civic and Social Coalition party, the Frente para la Victoria party, the party of the Concertación, and Unión PRO party. This evidences the large range of principles that support this initiative. Last November 2008, the Senate had already approved a similar legislative statement. Therefore, the Argentine Parliament became the first one in the world to support this global campaign.

The statement claims that the creation of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations will strengthen “the effectiveness, transparency, representativeness, diversity and legitimacy of decisions of the institutions of the UN system” and it argues that the establishment of an institution composed of “parliamentarians and NGOs that defend the representativeness of citizens” is “a decisive step in strengthening the United Nations system”.

It must be highlighted that in this part of the world there is no supranational federalist tradition like there is elsewhere, say in Europe. This makes such an initiative particularly significant in a region that lacks supranational regulations and limitations able to check the negative aspects of globalization, like Latin America is – an area of extreme vulnerability –.

The UNPA Campaign has toured worldwide from its inception in 2007, and since then the Committee for a Democratic UN (the organization that directs it) came in contact with Global Democracy-Movement for the South American Union and the World Parliament (DG), an NGO currently leading the campaign in Argentina. DG began to spread the voice of those who believe that it is necessary and possible to create a World Parliament where all the citizens of the world would be represented and that would complement the existing State representations in the UN system.

The spirit of the campaign is in line with Global Democracy's vision and mission, based on the idea that the nation-state system is no longer consistent with the purposes for which it was created, as a result of the progress of the interchange of people, information, technology and knowledge that globalization brings about.

Considering that, as the DG declaration of principles says:
-    Humanity faces global challenges that affect the lives of everyone, like the existence of an ecological, economic and demographic crisis, as well as the loss by national states of the control of technology and the monopoly of violence;
-    The scientific and technological revolution and the globalization of economic processes have led to profound social changes, that generate a manifest imbalance of power between global economic organizations and political institutions;
-    The progressive difficulty of nation states to perform the functions for which they were created and to promote a world ruled by Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and view the consequences of the erosion of their capacities in terms of loss of legitimacy of the representative democracy;
-    In a global world there is no room for national democracy alone, without building democracy beyond the nation-state in each of the levels at which there is an urgent need of political decisions to meet the challenges of globalization.

We believe it is essential to promote a participatory body in a world that seems ready for further work for a greater democratization of existing supranational institutions, and for creating new ones.

In this context, Fernando Iglesias, Executive Secretary of DG, has promoted, as a member of the House representing the Civic Coalition, the main opposition force in the country, this draft resolution that strongly supports the global campaign.

This achievement was not only a result of the continuing effort of the members of DG and the support of the global campaign (without which it would not have been possible) but of an international situation that clearly shows the need for global citizens to feel represented in a pluralistic and democratic space, together with the obvious flaws of national states. A historic opportunity to create new democratic entities capable of diminishing the negative aspects of globalization and of reinforcing the positive ones is presented to us.

Furthermore, this resolution paves the way for further work in Latin America towards the creation of supranational parliamentary spaces where the political power democratically discusses issues that concern every citizen, as well as for empowerment of the existing institutions, such as the Parliament of Mercosur, the Latin American Parliament, the Andean Parliament and the Central American Parliament, having in mind that these last two already have a system of direct election of their members, like the European Parliament.

It is a joint commitment by all of us who are part of this planet, and our effort will not be possible without the union of federalists to build a democratic world that binds us together and represents us, beyond our different regions.